Earnings Labs

Gladstone Land Corporation (LAND)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 25, 2014

$9.64

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Gladstone Land Corporation Fourth Quarter ended December 31, 2013 Shareholders’ Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded. Now, I’d like to turn the conference over to David Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone, please go ahead.

David J. Gladstone

Management

All right. Welcome to the conference call for Gladstone Land and this is David Gladstone and thank you, Keith, for that nice introduction and thanks for all of you people calling in. We like to talk to people, we enjoy this time that we have with our shareholders and wish we have more time like this. Please note that if you’re ever visiting the Washington D.C. area, we are located in a suburb called McLean, Virginia just outside and you have – of D.C. and you have an open invitation to stop and see us if you’re in this area. You’ll see a great team at work, and there’s over 60 members of the team now. So we’re no longer a small business, we have about $1.5 billion in assets under management in all our companies. Also, when you’re here, you’ll see that some of the folks bring their dogs and they come here to be with us during the day. So we have a good organization. We have a team presentation for you today. And the first person will be Michael LiCalsi, our Internal Counsel. He is also a Secretary to the company and he is President of our Administrator that keeps up with a lot of the statements regarding all the things that go on here. So he is going to talk about the forward-looking statements. Michael?

Michael LiCalsi

Management

Good morning, everyone. This report that we’re about to give may include statements that may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements with regard to the future performance of the company. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that are based on our current plan, which we believe to be reasonable. As there are many factors that may cause our actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, including all of those factors listed under the caption Risk Factors in our company’s Form 10-K and Form 10-Q reports that we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forms 10-K and 10-Q can be found on our website at www.gladstoneland.com, and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In our talk today, we will note that we intend to elect to be a real estate investment trust or REIT and therefore, we plan to talk about funds from operations or FFO. Since FFO is a non-GAAP accounting term, we need to explain that FFO is defined as net income, including the gains and losses from the sale of real estate and any impairment losses, plus depreciation and amortization of real estate assets. The National Association of REITs or NAREIT has endorsed FFO as one of the non-accounting standards that we can use in discussions of REITs. Please review our Form 10-K filed yesterday with the SEC and our financial statements for a detailed description of FFO. The report from the company’s President and CFO that you’re about to hear is an overview of the company’s operations and performance. We encourage all listeners to read yesterday’s press release and the annual report on Form 10-K that was filed yesterday with the SEC. There’s a lot of good information in those documents that will help any investor. You can find them at our website www.gladstoneland.com and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. To stay up to date on the latest news involving Gladstone Land and our other public companies, please follow us on Twitter, username @gladstonecomps and on Facebook, keywords The Gladstone Companies. And you can go to our general website to see more information about this company and our affiliated publicly traded funds at www.gladstone.com. I’d also like to take this opportunity to mention that we have our first Annual Meeting of Stockholders in McLean, Virginia in May of this year. The proxy will be filed in the late March or early April, and we will need you to vote your shares. Now I will turn the presentation back to David Gladstone.

David J. Gladstone

Management

All right. Thank you. That was a good report. Before we go into the numbers, I’d just like to update some of the newcomers to the call about our history. We began this company in 1997 as a fully-integrated berry and vegetable grower. Not only did we grow the berries, we were a shipper and marketer so we sold to people like Safeway and Kruger. We also had about 2,500 employees. We had the largest integrated strawberry operation in United States at the time. In 2004, we sold our agricultural operation business to Dole, we kept our farmland. Dole became our largest tenant and still is today. since the sale, our business has consisted solely of operating farmland – of owning farmland and leasing it to independent and corporate farmers. And since 2004, we’ve been buying farms and adding to our list of properties. Just as a reminder, there was a big gap in the time we were looking for farms due to the recession after 2004, and it’s only recently that we’ve come back into the market on a full-time basis. The farms we own are predominately concentrated in locations where farmers are able to grow really the high value annual crops, such as berries and vegetables. These are row crops, which are planted and harvested annually and many cases, more frequently. We also have a small amount of farmland that is farmed to blueberries, which are permanent crops and that blueberry bushes may last up to 40 years. Typically, blueberries are farmed by many other same fruit farmers that grow berries and vegetables and they are also sold to similar customers, such as the supermarkets and the wholesalers. We like the blueberry business, because there are varieties that can be harvested by machinery with labor cost going up,…

Danielle Jones

Management

Good morning everybody. I will start by discussing our status of converting to a REIT. David mentioned we completed all significant actions necessary to convert to a REIT including the distribution of all accumulated earnings and profits in prior years. Plus we believe, we qualify and intend to elect to be taxed as a REIT for federal income tax purposes beginning with the year ended December 31, 2013. The selection will be made when we file our 2013 tax return, which will be within the next few months. We intend to be organized into operating manner that will allow us to continue to be qualified in tax as a REIT. As long as we qualify as a REIT, we generally will not be subject to U.S. federal income tax, if we distribute at least 90% of our taxable income to our stockholders. And now, let’s discuss our operating results beginning with the balance sheet. As David mentioned, we acquired seven additional farms this quarter for an aggregate of $32.9 million. These acquisitions further diversified our investment portfolio to include 21 farms located in five different states. While the majority of our farm acreage and rental operations remain concentrated in California, we continue to diversify our portfolio. The percentage of total acres we owned based on farms in California has decreased from over 95% two years ago to just 24% as of December 31, 2013. With our acquisitions this quarter, we also further diversified our crop type by acquiring more properties with permanent crops and expanding into the grain market, as well as our tenant base for adding additional growers on our property. We intend to continue to further diversify our portfolio by acquiring additional farms in our regions of focus. During the fourth quarter, our total assets increased to $93.7…

David J. Gladstone

Management

All right, that was a good report Danielle, and this is our first year as a public company. It is very expensive to get from being a private company to a public company that. But now we’ve finished with all of that. We have our first 10-K filed that should be far less expensive and a lot easier as we go forward. I think the main report to tell you about is that we executed on the plan to acquire farms in 2013, using the proceeds from the public offering. And we also have a nice list of potential properties that we’re interested in acquiring through, and as we go through that list, we hope to be able to grow the farm portfolio significantly during 2014. Since we’ve used all the equity money from the IPO now in new farms, we are now using money that we have for our mortgage loan and we have availability to borrow [ph] under our line of credit and we’re currently working with our lender to expand the line of credit and if that happens, we’ll buy quite a few more farms. We have signed a letter of intent, and going forward, we hope to finish that increase in our lines soon. And I think the new line of credit will have plenty of money to buy farm. So we’re looking forward to that. With an increase in the portfolio of farms, of course, comes greater diversification and protection for investors and we also expect much better earnings. We anticipate that many of the farms we purchased will be acquired from farmers or agricultural companies and that they or independent farmer will simultaneously lease the farm from us. These types of transactions provide the tenant with an alternative to other financing sources such as…

Operator

Operator

Yes. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) And the first question comes from Dan Donlan with Ladenburg Thalmann. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Thank you, and good morning.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Good morning, Dan. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: David, can we talk first about the mortgage loan discussions or the credit facility discussions that you’re having. It looks like you still have $16 million or so, on your balance sheet. So I’d imagine you’re probably going to encash at least and I’d imagine you’re probably going to run through that before you’re going to extend the line, but could you maybe talk about how much you’re trying to extend the line by, if possible?

David J. Gladstone

Management

Well, we have signed a letter of commitment, and we paid the fee. The lawyers are drafting the documents now. So until we get the final document, it’s really hard to talk about that. I don’t like to guess where it will come out. we’ve asked for, and they’ve agreed to a very large amount, which I don’t – again, don’t want to give out. but if we got, what we’re going to get, we will have plenty of money to buy farms for a good amount of time. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. and then… Go ahead.

Danielle Jones

Management

Dan, just going to follow on, even if we expand it, it doesn’t mean we’re going to draw right away. So we’ll draw the funds as we need it. So we’ll just expand the facility to give us the capability to do that. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. And as far as facilities tend to be more short-term use of proceeds from most the REITS, is your intention to then term out that line with longer-term mortgages secured by various farms or what’s your thought process there?

David J. Gladstone

Management

Yes, two points to make there. First of all our lender, everybody knows I think it’s MetLife. They’ve been wonderful. And what happens there is we actually have a mortgage in place that has another 17 years on it if I remember.

Danielle Jones

Management

26.

David J. Gladstone

Management

26. So, 26 more years to go and we can pull down on...

Danielle Jones

Management

2026.

David J. Gladstone

Management

2026. Okay. That’s what I thought. So, 2026, so we can draw down on that whenever we buy a farm and we put it under their collateral obviously. So, it’s not like we have to go out and search for a mortgage every time we do a transaction. It’s in place. And if you remember, the old mortgage was at about 3.5%. We certainly expect to get that going forward as well. So, from our standpoint, we feel really comfortable working with MetLife. However, we have talked to MetLife and we’ve reached an understanding that if we want to mortgage with someone else, so that if we want to go out and say, go to some of the other mortgage lenders therein, the farmland business, we can do that as well. So, we will probably diversify some over time, although it’s really hard to beat what MetLife is offering. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. Understood. I appreciate that color. And then as far as what you have under due diligence versus LOI versus the overall pipeline, can you maybe give us a sense as to where is that shaking out?

David J. Gladstone

Management

Well, as I mentioned, there’s one and we’re trying to close now. It’s purchase and sale agreement. It’s only about $2.5 million. So, not a big deal. And then LOI is about $5.6 million and then that has been – indications of interest, where we told them we want to buy that’s about $60 million. And then there’s about $550 million of stuff that we haven’t worked on very hard other than telling them, this is where we are. This is what we’re interested in doing. We obviously don’t have enough money to buy all of that. But if we got our deal done with MetLife, we would be in – as I say in the farming business, tall cotton. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. I don’t know that’s saying, but I’ll take your word for it.

David J. Gladstone

Management

It’s a good thing. Tall cotton is good. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. And then as far as competition goes for farmland assets, have you lost out to some of the larger pension funds that are continue to pour money into the sector? Can you maybe talk about.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Let me tell you where we are on competition. For the bigger transactions, we’ve not been able to compete because we’re small. We didn’t do one deal that was about $50 million that we wish we could have done. We had another one at. We think we would have won it at $28 million to $30 million. We don’t know that because it hasn’t closed yet. We did not bid on that because again we just couldn’t take on that much at one whack. As time goes on and we get bigger, we will be able to stand up to some of the larger pension fund such as well, pension fund like TIAA-CREF, who probably owns $3 billion worth of land and is buying all over the world. Prudential is a big buyer for their REIT portfolio, not REIT portfolio, but their farmland portfolio. And John Hancock is very large. There are several other buyers that buy big blocks that we just haven’t been able to compete with. We did run into on the Oregon property, which is a pretty good sizable property at $13 million. We did run into one of the bidders there and we were chosen over them. And I can’t tell you why other than I guess our prices were better. But more importantly, we look at things for the very long-term, want to stay with the same tenant as long as we can. And I think we came across of that, plus our fellow that’s working for us in California knew the gentlemen and his family for some time. So, we went out from that perspective as well in terms of trust. So, yes, we do run into a lot of competition, when it comes to bigger transactions, although someone like TIAA-CREF will be buying land in Uruguay and Argentina and Chile and Africa, all over. So, they’re looking for big place, we are still in the smaller area. On the small end of the stick, we sometimes run into other farmers that are out there looking at farms, looking to buy farms. And we’ve not lost any to other farmers. But I suspect in the future, we will. There are some smaller farmers that we don’t buy properties from because they want ridiculous prices. And so, just let’s you know, if those prices do come to fruition, our portfolio would be worth about twice what it is today. But right now, we feel very comfortable dealing with the smaller transactions and unfortunately, you just have to do a lot of them in order to get the size. Did I answer your question? Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Yes, it’s more than answered, David. I appreciate it. Thank you.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Keith, do we have any other questions?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from Brian Hollenden with Sidoti & Company. Brian Hollenden – Sidoti & Company, LLC: Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my call.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Good morning, Brian. Brian Hollenden – Sidoti & Company, LLC: So, what are you seeing in terms of pricing and cap rates on the deals that you’re currently looking at?

David J. Gladstone

Management

Yes, cap rates and for those who don’t know what cap rate is, it’s the yield that you get when you divide the purchase price into the amount of rent that you’re going to get. And the cap rates have remained pretty steady and I think we’re averaging about 5.5% now in our return. And so, that’s a good rate especially given the fact that you can push the rate up in a couple of years. Usually, in two to three years, we have on our leases the ability to increase the rent to the current property values. And so, as a result, we work on that theory that maybe a little bit low as you get into the deal, but certainly after a couple of years, you’re going to be moving the rent up and you’re going to be in the 6% or 7% rent in 5, 6 years. So, we’re seeing cap rates remain the same. Not to say that there are some people out there that they trying to get 4s and 3s and those kind of things. But it’s not something we’re going to buy at that rate. Brian Hollenden – Sidoti & Company, LLC: All right. Thanks for that. And then you alluded a little bit to how much you generally you’re looking to spend in 2014. I was wondering if you can give us a little more concise of what you think you actually will execute on for fiscal 2014.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Probably somewhere between $50 million and $100 million would be a guess today. And that will – there are a lot of variables around that. Brian Hollenden – Sidoti & Company, LLC: Okay. Thank you very much.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Next question, please?

Operator

Operator

Once again, we have another follow-up question from Dan Donlan with Ladenburg Thalmann. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Hi, David, just wanted to go back to the rent discussion. I think you got 22% of your rents expiring in 2014. Can you give us any sense from a modeling perspective, what type of increases we can expect there? I think in the past, you’ve had some that is increased, maybe double-digit for others, maybe kind of in the low single-digit. So, any color there would be helpful.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Yes, we have two that are coming up this year. We presented the new lease to both of them, they’re both considering it. In one of the cases, we have somebody that owns the property in the worse way, we actually showed that person the lease and they would jump on it in a heartbeat. So, at least – tenant number one doesn’t want it, we do have a backup for that one. The other one is a property that I have owned since 1997, and it is just a perfect piece of property for growing berries. And I think it will go for a very high number. I don’t know that either one of those in the year coming up will be double-digit. But it will be very strong. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. And then lastly, at the IPO, you talked about potentially being able to issue OP units to prospective buyer or prospective sellers. Is that something that you’re still exploring? Have you seen any interest there? Any details would be helpful.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Sure. We’ve had one individual, who wanted to do it, but the property was not something that we really wanted. It was a little more development. As you probably know, there are farms that transition from – and this one happened to be in the Florida. That transition from oranges into, say, strawberries or blueberries or something else, higher and better use. The problem in Florida, of course, is that so many of the trees have this blight that’s going on down there killing the trees. And so, this was one that we were going to have to spend a lot of money to convert. And he wanted to do UP units, UPREIT because he’s got a very low cost basis. But we just couldn’t see our way to investing that much money and having low returns over the next 5 to 10 years. And so, as a result, we passed on it. That’s really the only one that we’ve come close to and quite frankly, the biggest problem is the low float on the shares, the small net worth. You may remember a company called Capital Automated REIT, I was part of that Board. And we really didn’t get started on UPREIT shares until much later in the process. Once we’ve gotten, I don’t know $400 million I think in assets before people took us seriously about UPREIT. We’ve got one family that’s interested. Their price is a little bit too high at this point. So, as time goes on, it will be a big part of it, but we just got to get bigger first before we can do that. So, none in discussion at this point in time other than sort of tangentially about the pricing. Dan P. Donlan – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc.: Okay. Thank you, David.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Other questions?

Operator

Operator

Actually there are no more questions at this present time. So, we would like to turn the call back over to management for any closing comments.

David J. Gladstone

Management

Okay. Thank you very much all of you for calling in, and we look forward to talking to you in the quarter end. And I think you are going to see some big pluses by then. Thanks very much. That’s the end of this conference.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thanks for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.